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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25878127">To Dance a Strange, Unknown Flame</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberwing/pseuds/amberwing'>amberwing</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Dragonsbane Fusion, Alternate Universe - Southern Reach Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Crossovers &amp; Fandom Fusions, Dreams and Nightmares, Kingdom Hearts But Make It Paprika, M/M, Metafiction, Riku &amp; Sora's Bogus Journey, Temporary Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:28:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,203</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25878127</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberwing/pseuds/amberwing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Riku stifled the immediate desire to lash out, demand that they cut the cryptic bullshit, by biting his lip, hard. He was <i>so</i> done with mysterious figures spouting mysterious philosophy, but this was the first lead he’d had in a long time. He stepped back with a frown and flicked Braveheart away again in a shower of sparks. “Do you know where we are?”</p>
<p>The black-coat's shrouded head cocked to the side, a gesture so reminiscent of Sora that Riku had to swallow a sudden swell of hurt-fear-miss you. “A dream,” they said simply, then placed their hands on their hips. “More specifically, the dream <i>of</i> a dream—a dream squared. Maybe even cubed by now! But you know all about that, don’t you? Gotta follow the white rabbit, if we wanna set stock in clichés.” </p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Riku races through Shibuya in search of Sora, plagued by questions: What is a dream? What is reality? When the two intersect, are they all that different?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Re⊕Collect: A Soriku Fic Collection</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>To Dance a Strange, Unknown Flame</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The shadow whispered, <br/>“That is the city I showed you in your dreams,”<br/>day after day, upon passing through the countless branching paths</p>
<p>A wise man in the darkness gathered cast-off days,<br/>and along the coast, along the coast, <br/>made to dance a strange, unknown flame.<br/>—Susumu Hirasawa, <em> The Girl in Byakkoya  </em></p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Riku had been wandering this dream city, opening his eyes to see the same tree-lined sidewalk, the same towering glass buildings, for a long, long time; he <em> expected </em>it at this point. Nothing was ever different. The only thing he could change was his direction, and he ranged out from that spot in every possible direction each night, trying to imagine the impossible compass rose of this place and hop-skip-jump across its points. He’d climbed the buildings. He’d unlocked manholes with Braveheart and clambered through strangely spotless sewers.</p>
<p>For all its lights and promising signs, it was a dead place.</p>
<p>It was different this time. Braveheart was in his hand immediately, weighty, grounding: a lodestone that he dearly needed. This was a crossroads, more grandiose than anything he’d ever seen or dreamed before—save the strange streets of Xehanort’s memories, all that ruined magnificence at odds with how quietly the bastard died.</p>
<p>Skyscrapers caged Riku in atop wet asphalt and prison-bar crosswalks. It was raining. The sensation of cold water against his skin was shocking; the city was usually so sterile. Drops pinged softly against glass and metal, sent the jewel-bright colours of neon signage shattered and prismatic against every surface.</p>
<p>Riku let out the breath he’d been holding slow, careful, controlled. Okay. Different was a good thing. It was <em> progress </em>.</p>
<p>“Whatcha waiting for?” someone asked, and Braveheart was at their throat before Riku even registered. When he focused on who it was and found it to be a black-coat, slick and shiny with rain and reflected neon, he tilted Braveheart’s edge to dig into the darkness of their hood, felt unseen flesh indent beneath the pressure. His wrist ached; this black-coat didn’t sound like Roxas, was way too tall for Roxas, but old pains didn’t seem to understand that.</p>
<p>“Wow! Take it easy!” they said, hands rising in surrender. “Give a guy a heart attack!”</p>
<p>“Who are you? What are you doing here?”</p>
<p>“Me? I’m just like you,” the black-coat said. One gloved hand disappeared into their hood to rub—presumably—their neck. “Looking for something.”</p>
<p>Riku stifled the immediate desire to lash out, demand that they cut the cryptic bullshit, by biting his lip, hard. He was <em> so </em>done with mysterious figures spouting mysterious philosophy, but this was the first lead he’d had in a long time. He stepped back with a frown and flicked Braveheart away again in a shower of sparks. “Do you know where we are?”</p>
<p>Their shrouded head cocked to the side, a gesture so reminiscent of Sora that Riku had to swallow a sudden swell of hurt-fear-miss you. “A dream,” they said simply, then placed their hands on their hips. “More specifically, the dream <em> of </em>a dream—a dream squared. Maybe even cubed by now! But you know all about that, don’t you? Gotta follow the white rabbit, if we wanna set stock in clichés.” </p>
<p>“Yeah.” Somewhere above them thunder rolled, distant and echoing through the spires of skyscrapers. The rain was cold down the back of Riku’s neck. “I just don’t know how deep I have to dive.”</p>
<p>The black-coat leaned forward at the waist, peering at him with their hands clasped behind their back. “Me neither! But this is closer than you’ve gotten before, isn’t it? Progress!”</p>
<p>Riku shivered without meaning to. The rain was getting harder, and the neon lights and the black-coat smudged into smears of colour. “Yeah, but...” He blinked water from his eyes, then pulled his hood up finally; it wasn’t like he could hear or see anything through the downpour anyway. “I can’t see—”</p>
<p>“Hold up,” the black-coat interrupted and stepped close. Their edges were strangely blurry, like wet paint. Even with them only a couple feet away now, Riku couldn’t see any sign of a face in that hood. “Don’t look. Follow your heart.”</p>
<p>Riku blinked, and he was alone in the rain. Goosebumps shivered along his arms, and he whirled around, searching frantically, but there was only the crossroads and its blinking lights, hazy, slowly spreading colour. A sudden thought: was it just the rain, or was the world actually falling apart, melting in thick streaks? Would it take him with it?</p>
<p>Okay. Okay. Try again. Riku’s heart pounded a counterpoint in his throat, tugging fitfully, and—<em> there </em>: a single, clear spot of brightness in the form of a neon sign across the street, flashing steadily. Before he could think better, he sprinted towards it, water spraying with each step.</p>
<p>The light rested behind a tall storefront window, streaks of water down the glass blurring the edges of its strange letters—sliding, changing, until it was written in a more-familiar alphabet: <em> La Maison Dieu </em> , blinking steadily on and off, on and off. With each flicker, the words rearranged themselves again, and he understood: <em> The Tower </em>, in poison-green curlicues and whorls. Reading it didn’t tell him anything, but he could feel—something inside, something waiting.</p>
<p>Riku wasn’t sure if it was waiting for him.</p>
<p>A dream—to the power of three, maybe. Or more. The room beyond was a jigsaw of shadows and silhouettes, obscured by the neon. Whatever this was, he’d have to figure it out inside.</p>
<p>The door was locked—but when had that ever stopped him?</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>It was hard to say how long the biologist walked down the coast, following scraps that hinted at some previous traveller. He had to wonder if those signs weren’t just some projection on his part, some subconscious need to think that there was someone else here. His animal mind scrabbled to create meaning out of nothingness, to organize the quiet, imperfect systems that surrounded him. The shiver of shore grasses in the wind, the dawn catching each tine of purple thistles.</p>
<p>He found scratched hollows in the sandy soil that could have been campsites, faded scraps of fabric that could have, at one time, been expedition green. Several weeks on, he stumbled over the collapsed remnants of a tent, its plastic skeleton bleached and cracked by too many summers. A field mouse had nested in the rusted hollow of what was once a can of rations, nursing a handful of pink, naked offspring. He watched it for a time and wondered if it was someone he had once known.</p>
<p>If it was, did it matter?</p>
<p>The signs became more frequent as he travelled. When he found a note, scribbled on a piece of paper half-hidden beneath a rock, he couldn’t bring himself to even pull it free, let alone read it, right away. He sat beside it in the scrubby brush scattered on the leeside of the dunes for minutes or hours or days, like that would let him absorb its message. That seemed less frightening.</p>
<p>It was his husband’s handwriting, messy, taking up more than its allotted space (just like he does—did); rain had smeared the ink in places, but he <em> knew </em>the way his husband wrote, how the words went in spite of how much they had faded:</p>
<p>
  <em> I wish we had done this together. You would love it here. There’s no borders, nowhere to go but out. We’d never have to stop. I wouldn’t have minded, you know? I’d just be happy to be with you. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> I understand a little better now, I think. </em>
</p>
<p>When he’d finished, the biologist put it back under the rock and kept walking.</p>
<p>He hadn’t felt lonely so far, but in those moments it clawed up in his chest and displaced the slow, inevitable growth of his own brightness. At times, he wondered what the conclusion of his transformation would be, if he gave in. Would he become a field mouse, a dolphin, a gull with too-human eyes? Or something new, like the strange beasts he’d seen in the reeds along the way—pitiable false starts of some unseen evolutionary goal, hollowed out by radiance?</p>
<p>There was a dinghy waiting for him at the cape, its paint peeled and hull caked with dry mud, but still sound enough to take him to the island in the distance. His hands cracked and bled against the oars, but pain was good—pain kept him focused, kept the brightness banked to dim embers. When he reached the marshy shore, he pulled the boat far enough up to save it from storm surges and walked again.</p>
<p>He camped in the half-collapsed skeleton of another lighthouse, hollowed out by fire and weather; there was a kind of irony there that didn’t please him, exactly, but seemed appropriate. He’d left one tower only to arrive at another. This was the narrative he had constructed for himself.</p>
<p>The farthest edge of the island rose into a dramatic cliff. The thin, sandy soil was scraped to bare rock at its summit, but a stubborn black pine had managed to dig its roots in anyway. After his long climb up, he sat at the tree’s base, heedless of the rivulets of sap on the trunk. Someone else had rested here a long time ago; the ratty remains of an expedition jacket were snarled in the branches. A sidearm holster, its leather rotted and the gun clogged with rust, had fallen among the rocks—or had been cast aside with manic carelessness and joy as its owner struggled free of their skin.</p>
<p>He suspected the latter.</p>
<p>Who could they have been? A stranger? Some other, older expedition-member, long lost and forgotten? He would never know.</p>
<p>A kestrel hovered past the edge, held strangely immobile in a delicate balance of feathers against the wind. It was too high up to be hunting field mice or grasshoppers, so what might it be looking for? The biologist watched it for a long time, but it didn’t leave, didn’t perch—just hovered, silent, eerily still. The wind scraped through his coat, and as night began to fall, he built a fire for himself out of desperate dry grasses and the pine’s fallen branches. He’d caught a squirrel in a snare on the way here, and cooked and ate it as the sky beyond the clifftop became black and impenetrable, devouring the distant, ever-present phosphorescence and the silhouette of the kestrel both.</p>
<p>He woke to the feeling of tiny talons in his hair, tugging at the tangles. He’d curled up under his jacket on the leeward side of the pine, and the kestrel—a male, by its rust and grey colouration—hopped past his face, strands of hair in its beak. Another tug. He tried not to move, but the flutter of his eyelashes was enough to send it away in a flash of wings and a high scream, disappearing past the cliffside.</p>
<p>A mouse was laid atop his backpack as if in offering, still warm.</p>
<p>The thought came to him, unbidden and so heavy he felt he might fall: was this—? But he banished the idea as soon as he recognized it. (Even if, he wondered as he wandered back to the lighthouse and saw the kestrel following, distant but not distant <em> enough </em>for all his suspicions to be laid to rest. Even if—what did it change?</p>
<p>Nothing.)</p>
<p>Still, he couldn’t help but develop fondness for the kestrel, who soon took residence in the broken rafters of the lighthouse. As he wandered the tangled wood, he would see it overhead sometimes, a flash of rust and silver and an excited piping. In spite of himself he began to talk to it, asked it questions it couldn’t answer save to stare at him from its ever-calculated distance, its eyes fathomless and dark.</p>
<p>
  <em> Do you know how much I love you? Can you ever forgive me? </em>
</p>
<p>The kestrel was alone, too. It could have left, found better territory and a mate somewhere off this island, but it stayed with him. That was a trap that he stepped into gladly; years were passing, and speaking to the kestrel gave him a tie to reality that he held tenaciously. Words reminded him to pay attention to the brightness, held it in check when pain couldn’t. And if the kestrel had been a person, it seemed prudent to acknowledge it: <em> We were similar once. We can help each other remember. </em></p>
<p>Kestrels didn’t live much more than a decade in the wild, and when his kestrel didn’t return to roost several days in a row, he suspected. Had it been ten years? The passage of time seemed irrelevant now that he’d given up on finding answers, on finding his husband (had found his husband). Maybe it had been that long. Maybe it had been more.</p>
<p>When he found the kestrel’s body, it seemed smaller even than before, turned to a tiny bundle of age-faded feathers. He’d never gotten so close, and now he could tell that its eyes were blue, clear and still and endlessly deep.</p>
<p>He had turned away from the door in the tower, but now he could see that he had merely circled back to it; it had been waiting for him all this time, bright and beckoning in the well of the kestrel’s eyes.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Riku stumbled forward, caught himself by instinct alone; the cold shock of porcelain against his palms brought his eyes up, to find—only himself. His face stared back at him from a dirty mirror, unable to connect the steps between <em> there </em> and <em> here </em>. The air was thick with a tension that resisted his too-fast breaths, threatening to rip. There was something bright and alive in the back of his throat, a knot of something squirming and inevitable, and Sora was gone, Sora was dead, what was the point of resistance—</p>
<p>Sudden nausea had him bowed over the sink. Don’t hurl, don’t hurl, <em> don’t. </em></p>
<p>Braveheart tugged against the tendons of his palm, demanding, and brought his reflection back into focus. He was in a bathroom. The overhead lights set his face skeletal, and his eyes were greener than he remembered, bright and frantic, pupils expanding as he watched. He let out a long breath and pulled away from the sink, fists clenching at his sides.</p>
<p>“A dream,” he told the wild man in the mirror, like saying it would make him believe. “It’s not real.”</p>
<p>He waited, half-expecting his reflection to change, to quirk a smile while his own mouth remained thin, to ask him in his own mocking voice: <em> What the fuck are you doing? </em></p>
<p>With a curse, he turned away and shoved through the door with his shoulder. The sudden transition from clinical brightness into pitch black made him pause. A dark hallway. To the right, further blackness. To the left, a faraway gleam: something small and shiny dropped from someone’s pocket that caught a sourceless light.</p>
<p>His bootheels against the floor were cacophonous in this heavy, waiting silence. The light encircled the trinket’s surface as Riku approached. He bent to pick it up, and as soon as his fingertips brushed its surface, sound exploded: a low roar of conversation, laughter, music, swelling against the dark until its surface burst and threw Riku with it. He stumbled back from his crouch, the object clutched in one hand and Braveheart in the other.</p>
<p>“Woah there, cowboy!” the black-coat laughed. “This ain’t no rodeo.”</p>
<p>Riku forced himself to relax. When he dared to crack his eyelids open a sliver, the light had turned diffused and golden. Elegantly cozy little tables dotted a ballroom suffocating in velvet curtains. It took him a moment to realize that all of them were set for two.</p>
<p>The tables weren’t occupied—except they were, and Riku couldn’t remember why he thought the chairs had been empty.</p>
<p>“What is this?” he asked, and the black-coat patted his shoulder before swirling past with their hands linked behind their back.</p>
<p>“It doesn’t have a name,” they said, swaying past a table with drunken grace. “Let’s call it a speakeasy, how about?”</p>
<p>The black-coat must have caught the confusion on Riku’s face; they paused behind a small, slender person’s chair, resting their hands atop it. Neither the diner nor their partner seemed to notice. “Like a secret club. The rabble-rousers come to wind down after a long, hard day here—and maybe... rouse some more rabble?”</p>
<p>They didn’t wait for Riku to answer, just yanked the chair backwards. Riku’s breath caught in his throat in surprise and stayed there; he’d expected some yelling, some damage control he’d inevitably have to take care of, but the diner’s body slid apart, a stack of papers scattered by a sudden draft, their colours and shape fluttering to the ground.</p>
<p>The black-coat’s boot tore one of the fallen pages as they sat. They nudged stray bits of salad onto a fork before pushing it into their unseen mouth. “Mm! Love a good caesar.”</p>
<p>God, this was frustrating. What did that even mean? “So are you… rabble rousing, or whatever?”</p>
<p>The black-coat laughed. The former diner’s partner continued eating as though nothing had changed while the black-coat waved their fork in airy circles. “I mean, maybe! I haven’t quite decided yet. Might help, buuuut it could also make things worse. Whaddya think? We gonna flip to page seven, keep the status quo—or to page thirteen, break some rules?”</p>
<p>Riku looked at them for a long moment, considering; they waited, fork waving lazy circles in the air. “I don’t care about the rules. If I have to break them to find my friend, then that’s what I’ll do,” he said, and the black-coat dropped their fork to applaud him with a few lazy claps.</p>
<p>“Oh, well-said! I’m impressed. Very stirring, very inspiring. I just meant like a choose your own adventure novel—you liked those when you were little, right?—but we can go full melodrama if that’s more your style.” Riku barely had time to absorb that he was being mocked before they gestured to his clenched fist. “Whatcha got in your hand, by the way?”</p>
<p>The question caught Riku off-kilter. His fingers twitched around something small and hard and round, held tight in his palm. He should’ve been angry. He should’ve been afraid. He should’ve been a lot of things. He was none. With a curious emptiness, Riku uncurled his fingers, and there was the trinket he’d found in the hallway: a silver dollar, tarnished and dull.</p>
<p>“A coin,” he said softly, turning it in his palm.</p>
<p>The black-coat leaned towards him. “What does the coin <em> say </em>, Riku?”</p>
<p>Riku looked up and the black-coat was gone, their seat empty. With a certainty he couldn’t find reason for, he took the seat, sinking into its lush cushions. His partner was strangely familiar, small and lithe and brown across the table. He smiled at Riku and reached a hand across the table, waiting, and his eyes were so, so blue.</p>
<p>For some reason, Riku couldn’t hold his gaze. He looked at the tablecloth instead.</p>
<p>“Hey,” Sora said. “It’s okay.”</p>
<p>Something caught in Riku’s throat. He couldn’t bring himself to take the offered hand. “It’s really not. None of this is real. You’re still—”</p>
<p>Sora’s fingers wrapped around his, warm and disarmingly solid, pressing the coin deeper into his palm. “C’mon, Riku. I thought you were stronger than that.”</p>
<p>“That’s my line,” Riku managed, but it was a close thing, hoarse and wavering too much. Sora squeezed his hand in reassurance. “But I guess you can use it, just this once.”</p>
<p>“I never thought you’d let me have it that easy,” Sora teased, and Riku snorted, smiling at the tablecloth. “What next? Gonna let me win a race?”</p>
<p>“You’ll just have to wait and see.”</p>
<p>Sora’s other hand gently prised Riku’s clenched fist apart. The coin shone like a star in the heart of his palm, cupped by Sora’s break-crooked fingers. Riku didn’t know what had broken them, or when, and that not-knowing was a sharp and sudden pain. “Well, don’t take too long. I’m really bad at this patience thing.”</p>
<p>“I’m pretty done with it too.”</p>
<p>He started to look up, but Sora had plucked the coin from him and held it up between Riku’s eyes, eclipsing Sora’s face. “Weird coin. There’s a skeleton on a horse on this side,” he commented. “Looks kinda like my Halloween Town getup—did you ever visit? You’d love it; there’s ghosts and zombies… I guess the horse could be Maximus. Maybe it’s actually me?” Without waiting for Riku to answer, he asked, “So I guess that makes this heads. What’s tails?”</p>
<p><em> La Mort </em>, it read, the letters blackened and oxidized. Honeyed light rimmed the bottom edge, but those words swallowed it into something dark, something spined and scaled and monstrous. “Death,” he whispered.</p>
<p>Sora hummed. “That makes sense. Well, pick a side,” he said, and flicked the coin skyward.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>In the dark, the dragon was invisible. Riku knew it only by the faint, metallic hiss of scales; even with a mage’s sight, he couldn’t penetrate the shadows at the far end of the hall. There, the true entrance to the deep. There, as if flint and steel had been struck, the dragon’s eyes opening: twin suns that seemed to catch and devour each bare fragment of moonlight, and as Riku looked into them, the singing tightened around him in suddenly hot, vicious wires, and in the pattern and weave of them, words formed.</p>
<p><em> Did you worry that you had not wounded me sufficiently, that you must level the finishing blow by your own hand, mageling? </em> The dragon’s voice was not a sound, but a knowing that insinuated itself into him, hot and sullen. <em> Or have you come for something else? Medicines, perhaps, for your dying knight? </em>Riku twitched at the sudden lash of words, a viper’s fangs skittering along his skin, but did not let them dig in.</p>
<p>“I have come for medicines,” Riku agreed, and his voice didn’t shake. He stepped forward, chin set, and now he could make out the glimmering edges of the drake: a river of black glass, each thorn of spine and scale limned in moonlight. Its wings lay half-splayed across the stone, fallen blossoms of black silk, and the flick of its jeweled antennae illuminated the long, bird-like angle of its head, set the blood-slick ribbons of its mane incandescent. “The laboratories of the Bastion are world-renowned.”</p>
<p>The dragon’s voice twisted higher, a harp tuning sharp. <em> Bargain with me, mageling. </em></p>
<p>“No,” he answered automatically, but his breath caught on something, a nameless desire that he quickly shoved aside.</p>
<p><em> Are you so confident you can find your way? </em>The song offered Riku the impression of dark hallways and stairwells, innumerable and interchangeable, filled with air thick and stale and suffocating.</p>
<p>“I was given direction by one who lived here.” But Ienzo’s vague insinuations of the lab’s spirals and turns came back to him in a twist of dread. The alchemist had refused to give Riku maps, and now Riku hated him for it—hated the dragon for knowing how helpless he truly was. “And the Bastion shared little with outsiders, but even less with dragons,” he snapped.</p>
<p>The dragon’s amusement was a shocking caress, like ice against a fevered brow. <em> I know the place you seek. </em> And it showed him in snatches, pages flipped too quickly for him to read: corridors twisting and turning, a narrow doorway, the taste of blood, the sensation of talons snatching into flesh. <em> They thought they would be safe there—but a warren is no sanctuary from the stoat. </em></p>
<p>But the smug turn of its words went flat, and its body clenched and coiled in the spasmodic way of an eel atop the deck of a fishing boat. The dragon’s pain was silent and discordant, wings unfurled taut and claws extended to dig runnels into the wet stone, until it abruptly stilled once more. Riku listened, his breath caught in his throat, his nails caught in his palms.</p>
<p>
  <em> Do you think this man for whom you risk your life will survive longer than I? That even should you find your way through the depths, he will be alive when you return? </em>
</p>
<p>“He will be.” He felt the dragon’s eyes on him, narrowing as the flame of an oil lamp about to be snuffed. “He has to.”</p>
<p>Yet the smell of Sora’s scorched and blackened skin came back to him, followed by the trembling beat Riku had coaxed back into his heart: fragile, ephemeral, petals falling into a depthless pool.</p>
<p>He should never have let him into his home on the fell, so many years past. To be a mage, you must be a mage. The key to magic is magic. He <em> knew </em>that, had breathed the words in and out in meditation and study his whole childhood trying to find the barest sliver of further power; he should never have given in to the humour in his eyes, the hand offered in friendship. He had taken Sora’s hand and there was no room left for power; he had fooled himself into believing that was enough.</p>
<p>If he had stayed on the fell, kept to magic instead of pretending he could have both power and love, Sora never would have come here; none of this would have happened. He would be alone, but Sora would be safe.</p>
<p>Riku had thought he was worn too thin to feel heartache anymore, and yet it tugged in his breast fitfully, threatening to send him to his knees: the idea that Sora might die; the idea that the dragon might die; the idea that they both might live.</p>
<p><em> Bargain with me, </em> the dragon said again. <em> Heal me, and I will be your guide. </em></p>
<p>Riku’s pause seemed enough of an answer, for the dragon moved in a quicksilver flashing of light against scale, until Riku could see the darker hole of a doorway where its body had once been. <em> Go </em>, it said, all heat gone, replaced by cold, empty distance. The singing stilled to the barest tremble at the edge of his mind, tugging him to the door.</p>
<p>He didn’t hesitate.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“I’m dreaming,” Riku sighed. Soft blankets were wrapped around him just tightly enough to make him feel safe; there was no dragon here, no labyrinth, no bile-taste of regret. He drifted, eyes closed, listening to the muffled sound of a world he’d left behind: the far-off quarrel of seagulls, the crash of waves, the hiss-hush of palm leaves in the wind.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Sora said. Riku opened his eyes and there he was, leaning against the backboard with his own blankets thrown over his shoulders like a cape.</p>
<p>“But it’s a good dream, I think?” Sora continued, not meeting Riku’s eyes; he was peering at his bare feet atop the bed like they were the answer to some unnamable question, a sure sign that he was hiding something. Sora had never been good at lying to him. “I think. I hope. You’re here at least, right?”</p>
<p>Was he here? No, he was dreaming. This wasn’t real. But Riku extracted himself slowly from his cocoon. The air wasn’t cold by far, but after the cozy warmth of the covers it sent a little shiver down his arms. “Yeah, I guess,” he said, and his voice was scratchy with sleep. He ran a hand down his face, brushing hair from his eyes. “Why are you up?”</p>
<p>Sora shrugged. He snatched one of the pillows Riku’s head had vacated and hugged it to his chest, resting his cheek atop it. “Couldn’t sleep,” he mumbled, still refusing to look Riku in the eye. “Or—I guess I <em> am </em>asleep, but I... I wanted to dream something else.”</p>
<p>Riku paused before touching him, fear trickling down his spine. What if Sora disappeared? What if he woke up? But Sora was already scared— Riku could see it in the way his hands clenched into the pillow, the thin line of his lips—so he did what he did best: leaned forward to poke his cheek, just hard enough to make Sora raise his head, <em> look </em>at him. His skin was warm. He didn’t disappear. “What’s that for?” he demanded, cheeks puffed in a pout.</p>
<p>“For falling asleep <em> again </em>,” he teased back, and Sora’s pout only grew. His eyes were so, so blue. Before he could react, Sora smacked him right in the face with the pillow, and for a minute, Riku forgot: forgot that he was dreaming, forgot that this wasn’t really Sora, forgot that they weren’t in love. He snatched one of Sora’s skinny arms and pulled him down with him to roll and tickle until Sora pushed him off the bed, and all Riku could do was lie there, upper body on the floor and legs held prisoner in Sora’s arms, laughing and laughing.</p>
<p>“You goof,” Sora announced from above him, his grin a white crescent that Riku hadn’t seen in what felt like forever. “That’s the best you can do?”</p>
<p>“No,” Riku retorted, and twisted, capturing Sora’s waist between his calves to pull him down to the floor with him. Sora’s squawk and laughing protest went abruptly silent as Riku pinned him, shins holding his arms. Sora stared up at him and Riku stared back, suddenly breathless, something tight and unbearable squeezing in his ribs. He swallowed and managed, “Beat that.”</p>
<p>Sora’s forearms shifted slightly beneath him, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. It had been—a year, a whole fucking <em> year </em>since he’d seen Sora’s face, and he couldn’t bear to lose even a moment of this, of re-familiarizing himself with the curve of Sora’s cheek, the spray of freckles across his nose, the parted curve of his chapped lips.</p>
<p>“I miss you,” Sora said suddenly, and his voice sounded so far away. Riku’s breath caught, and he leaned down before he could stop himself, pressing his brow into the irrepressible mess of Sora’s hair. It was surprisingly soft. “I miss you so much.” Riku didn’t stop him from lifting his arms to wrap around his chest, pull him down against Sora’s skinny body, all angular ribs and collarbone.</p>
<p>“Me too,” Riku whispered. “Where are you?”</p>
<p>Sora laughed, humorless, and Riku’s stomach lurched for it. “If I knew, I’d tell you.”</p>
<p>“Doesn’t matter,” he told him, and Sora’s fingers dug into his shoulder blades. Riku’s breath shuddered out of him. “I’ll find you anyway.”</p>
<p>“Okay,” Sora whispered back, and pressed Riku back upward insistently until Riku gave in, propped himself up on his elbows to meet Sora’s eyes. Sora smiled at him in that way he’d been doing a lot lately—was doing last year, right before the end, where it wasn’t really happy but he wanted Riku to pretend it was. “Just... Be careful.” Jokingly, he added, “Since I can’t fall out of the sky to save you this time.”</p>
<p>One of Sora’s hands slipped away to search against the floor, lips pursed, until he found whatever it was. He held it up between them, and Riku startled: it was a card, straight out of Castle Oblivion. Riku sat back on his heels, back against the bed frame, fear a spike through his sternum. “Riku?”</p>
<p>Sora sat up before he could stop him and gently touched his shoulder. “I’ve been trying to read it, but I can’t get it to make sense. I feel like it’s important.”</p>
<p>Riku closed his eyes, then let himself look at Sora again; if a heart always remembered, maybe he could imprint Sora into his more indelibly than he already was, deepen the lines he’d drawn there until he could never lose even the barest detail. Then, he held out his hand. The cardstock was warm against his callouses, its edges softened with use and its colours sun-faded to hints of coral and sepia. The words came slowly: <em> L’Amore, </em>beneath an arbour thick with blooms: daffodils and foxglove and roses amidst other flowers he didn’t know. Two intertwined figures hung from the arch, upside down, as though in mid-fall.</p>
<p>“Wow, that bad, huh? What is it? The Joker?” Sora asked. Riku thumbed the worn corners of it briefly, let out a breath, and offered it back to him. “Aw, c’mon, Riku!”</p>
<p>“Give it another guess.”</p>
<p>“That’s not fair,” he muttered, but snatched the card back and squinted at it. “Theeeee… Ace of Spades?”</p>
<p>Riku leveled a look at him, and Sora grinned. “Are you even trying?”</p>
<p>“No,” Sora replied cheerfully. “I figure you’ll get bored and just tell me.” He flexed the card between his fingers, arch and bow. “So, what is it?”</p>
<p>Riku breathed in, breathed out. “The Lovers.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” Sora whispered, and that could mean any number of things—dismay, denial, distrust. Riku had to stop himself from looking away. This was a dream. What were dreams for except telling the truth, even if it the telling was weird and so painful he could feel his heart pounding in his temples?</p>
<p>Sora’s eyes darted up to his, and Riku could almost count his eyelashes; everything was going so fast and so slow all at once, and his heart raced and stumbled and scrambled back to its feet to keep sprinting, but he couldn’t tell if it was towards Sora or away.</p>
<p>“I... I think I get it now.” He tugged at Riku’s clenched fist, and Riku let his palm unfurl, let Sora place the card there. The picture was upright now, the silhouettes rising from a bed of blossoms instead of falling. The title caught the light in striations of gold: letters, symbols, a gate. When he looked back up, Sora smiled, small, hopeful, and everything inside Riku came to a stop. “See? It’s just us.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>When Riku looked up, Sora was gone. He sat at the edge of a dried-up fountain in the dream city. It wasn’t raining anymore. His hands were empty. He closed his eyes against the hot, choking wave of disappointment and grief in his ribs, took a deep breath, and opened them again.</p>
<p>Movement in his peripheral vision became the black-coat, who sat beside him gracelessly. He couldn’t find it in him to be surprised anymore.</p>
<p>“Ah,” they sighed. “Y’know, life would be a lot easier if you just <em> talked </em> to people.”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Riku agreed. He stood with a sigh of his own. “But easy isn’t my style.”</p>
<p>That got a laugh, but Riku was already walking. The black-coat jogged to catch up. “And why’s that? Why <em> wouldn’t </em>you want it to be easy for a change?” They danced in front of him, walking backwards at a precarious speed to keep ahead of Riku’s fast pace. “Is this a martyrdom thing? C’mon, humour me.”</p>
<p>Riku stopped, and they nearly stumbled over the hem of their coat. How did he explain to some potentially-nefarious anonymous weirdo that every good thing he’d managed to scrape back from his mistakes had taken his whole self? That he’d let it all go in an instant if that would bring Sora back? “Why do you care?”</p>
<p>“I love a good story, and yours is pretty fascinating!” They got their balance and held up a hand, ticking off on their fingers. “It’s got fencing, fighting, torture, revenge! Giants, monsters, chases, escapes! True love!” They spread their arms expansively. “Miracles! Everything we ever wanted.” They paused, like they expected Riku to say something, which wasn’t going to happen. Riku stepped past them, only to jerk back as they grabbed his arm.</p>
<p>“Hooooold up, hero! You’re forgetting something.”</p>
<p>A wave of tiredness flowed over him, heavy, suffocating. He looked at them. In the impenetrable dark of their hood, he thought he saw—no. A trick of the light. “Gonna tell me what?”</p>
<p>“I could. But I thought you didn’t want it easy?”</p>
<p>Riku wanted to be angry, but exhaustion dulled every sharp edge to putty. “You’re just going to spout some more nonsense. And this isn’t the hard part, anyway.”</p>
<p>They laughed and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, leaning in close. He couldn’t feel their breath against his ear as they spoke. “You’re right. But, just listen for a second, okay? This is a <em> story </em>. Get it? And what do all stories have in common?”</p>
<p>“I’ve missed the last two years of high school, so you’re going to have to elaborate,” Riku said dryly, and that got him another delighted chortle.</p>
<p>“We’ll keep it simple, then. At its most basic, a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.” They counted them off on their fingers again, right in front of Riku’s nose. He could barely keep his eyes open to watch their flicking. “The beginning is the setup: the stage as the curtain opens, revealing the set and our actors, ready to be discovered.” Somehow, they were walking, though Riku couldn’t feel his legs move.</p>
<p>“The middle is triggered by the conflict. Our beloved protagonists and deuteragonists—that’s you—are confronted with a problem, and they’ve gotta struggle to solve it.”</p>
<p>His eyes kept fluttering shut; he fought to keep them open. The world was a blur of neon lights. “It’s through this struggle that their character arcs occur. A story within a story, sorta. A dream within a dream. And the end—the <em> resolution! </em>”</p>
<p>The city gave way to a light, airy place. Boxes of pinned insects lined the creamy walls. The black-coat gently pushed Riku into a seat and his knees buckled, nearly spilling him to the floor. “That’s what we’re all aiming for, isn’t it? The resolution? Where all these fun little threads of sub-narrative we’ve created in the middle get woven back together into a—hopefully—beautiful tapestry?”</p>
<p>Was there glass keeping the bugs inside? Were they wriggling on their pins, trying to escape? He was on his back and he didn’t remember how he’d gotten there.</p>
<p>“But the thing—oh, don’t move so much, it’ll just hurt more if I miss—the thing is, that tapestry is gorgeous! Except that’s <em> all </em> it is. Sure, it’s nice to admire the product of all that hard work, but after that... Everything’s just <em> empty </em>.”</p>
<p>Something sharp forced its way through his sternum in a hard, punching sensation; his breath caught on something invasive and cold and hot and his body refused to listen to him, just shook and shook. A sky-blue eye peered at him, massive as a moon, pupil dilated to a black hole. “I gave you some examples along the way here. Real fun stuff. All that nihilism and despair.”</p>
<p>His throat clenched and unclenched. Braveheart screamed inside of him, caught just as inescapably on the same pin he’d been skewered with. The kestrel. The dragon. The brightness. The song. The blue eye. <em> Sora </em>. “No.”</p>
<p>The world shook dizzyingly. He was hanging on the wall now alongside countless blue butterflies; his body sagged against the pin caught between his ribs. “Go on,” the black-coat encouraged, stepping back to observe their work. “I’m always up for a good debate.”</p>
<p>Riku’s head spun. Don’t hurl, don’t black out, don’t die. Not yet. He couldn’t. “Those—weren’t the real endings.”</p>
<p>“Can you prove that?” Hands folded behind their back, they turned on a heel and paced away from him. “And even if they weren’t—what does it matter? A happy ending or a sad ending is still an <em> ending </em> . That’s the rule, y’know. All stories <em> end </em> . And since <em> this </em>story is about you and Sora, about you two coming together—well, you see why I can’t allow that. I want to keep going. Don’t you?”</p>
<p>“You’re stupid,” Riku said, and the black-coat tilted their head at him, like they couldn’t believe he’d go so low. The single blue eye flicked up and down in examination, pupil thinning from full to crescent. Braveheart sang inside of him, steel blade against steel pin, and with a scream he ripped himself free.</p>
<p>The keyblade flowed out of him like molten metal, searing and cauterizing, and Riku lunged, throwing his whole body into the black-coat. Braveheart sunk into them with barely any resistance, and they collapsed to the floor with Riku atop them like a mantled hawk, the keyblade through their chest and into the hardwood floor and his hand crushed into an unseen windpipe.</p>
<p>The world swayed around them like he was on a carousel, and his gut rose and settled unnervingly. The black-coat couldn’t speak; Riku felt their throat working against his fingers and loosened his grip just enough that they could.</p>
<p>“I’m being literal, you know,” they whispered hoarsely. “If you do this, you’ll be finished. There’s no telling what’ll happen.”</p>
<p>“Wasn’t that the point of all this?” Riku answered. Moisture dropped onto the black leather of their coat, and he realized he was crying, his voice a shaking rasp. “I just want my friend back. It doesn’t matter what happens; <em> I just want him to be okay </em>.”</p>
<p>The black-coat’s eye, so vivid in the darkness of their hood, widened briefly. Their hands, which had gripped Riku’s arms as if to throw him free, slackened and dropped to their chest. They gingerly touched the molten brightness where Braveheart entered their body.</p>
<p>“Ah,” they said, and their eye closed, disappearing into solid black once more. “No one can say I didn’t try.” They reached upwards again and wiped tears from Riku’s cheek, soft and careful.</p>
<p>Riku shoved Braveheart the last few inches in and twisted, dragged the blade down until the light formed a too-bright crevasse down their center; their fingers helped him as he dug into the brightness there with his hands alone, black leather against hot white light that would burn through them both soon, and Riku didn’t <em> care </em>, because he could hear a heartbeat, he could feel—</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“I’m dreaming,” Riku sighed. Soft blankets were wrapped around him just tightly enough to make him feel safe; there were no butterflies here, no black-coats, no bile-taste of fear. He drifted, eyes closed, listening to the muffled sound of a world he’d left behind: the far-off quarrel of friends, the chime of a distant clock, the soft rush of breathing at his side.</p>
<p>“No,” Sora said. Riku opened his eyes and there he was, lying beside him spread-eagle, fingers tightly locked into Riku’s own, skin hot and a little sweaty in such a familiar way that Riku’s heart stuttered. Sora, brown and freckle-spattered; Sora, his hair a tumbleweed; <em> Sora. </em></p>
<p>“Sora?”</p>
<p>Sora rolled over onto his side and entwined his other hand with Riku’s. His cheek mushed into the pillow in a way Riku loved and had forgotten somehow. He knew he was staring, but Sora was staring back. “Riku?”</p>
<p>“Yeah?”</p>
<p>“You’re awake,” he said softly, and tugged insistently until Riku was curled against him, until Riku could feel the rhythm of his breathing and hear his heartbeat and breathe in the cotton and clean sweat of his t-shirt. “We’re awake.”</p>
<p>***<br/><br/></p>
<p>[...]Still, how the great middle<br/>ticker marched on, and from all its four chambers<br/>to all its forgiveness, unlocked the sternum's<br/>door, reversed and reshaped until it was a new<br/>bright carnal species, more accustomed to grief,<br/>and ecstatic at the sight of you.<br/>—Ada Limón, <em> Adaptation </em>  </p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Published works referenced:<br/><i>Dragonsbane</i> by Barbara Hambly; <i>Acceptance</i> by Jeff VanderMeer<br/><i>Paprika</i>; <i>The Princess Bride</i></p>
<p>There's a bunch of other little tidbits thrown hither and thither in here, especially in MoM's dialogue. I wanted to cram in at least 20 more mini crossovers--maybe someday I'll find the energy to revisit and add them.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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